|
Institutional
Affiliations
Project for a New American Century: Signed PNAC's 1997 founding statement of principles (3)
Hudson Institute: Trustee Emeriti (2)
Education
Brooklyn College: B.A. (1)
Brown University: M.A. in Classics
Ohio State University: Ph.D. in History, 1958
|
Highlights
& Quotes
Donald Kagan, the father of neoconservative bright lights Robert and Frederick Kagan, is a historian and classical scholar at Yale University. He is associated with the Hudson Institute and the Project for the New American Century. He signed PNAC's founding statement of principles and contributed a chapter on U.S. global leadership for the 2000 volume Present Dangers, a PNAC book co-edited by his son Robert and William Kristol.
Kagan is the author of numerous books, including The Great Dialogue: A History of Greek Political Thought from Homer to Polybius, 1965; The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, 1969; The Archidamian War, 1974; The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition,1981; The Fall of the Athenian Empire ,1987; and Pericles and the Birth of the Athenian Empire, 1990.
One of his more recent books, While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today (2000), which he co-wrote with son Frederick, compares the United States at the end of the Cold War to post-World War I Great Britain, arguing that the United States is weak and vulnerable, and that it needs to greatly boost military spending. In a review of the book, University of Chicago scholar Bruce Cumings wrote: "The storm has been gathering for a decade, according to the Kagans, but in 1991 we failed to comprehend that we were at a critical turning point. ... It would indeed be one of the great ironies of modern times if 1991 -- the year the United States emerged from the Cold War as the only remaining superpower, outspending all conceivable adversaries combined on defense and launching an information revolution that would sweep the globe -- was really the beginning of the end of American dominance. But the United States can still save itself, say the authors, if it spends more on defense and acquires loads of new weapons. This last message, which dominates the latter third of the book, seems to have been perfectly timed for the 2000 presidential campaign. ... There is one good thing about While America Sleeps: No one who reads it is going to run out and buy a flak jacket, teach kindergartners to 'duck and cover,' or restock a backyard bomb shelter. This is a book to assign to students who want to know what professors mean when they say "a little history is a bad thing." (4)
|
